It’s Stan Lee’s birthday this week. He turns 89 and he seems busier now than he was at 49 1/2.

My only Stan Lee story is from the one time that I met him. It was social. It was political. It was dinner.

That’s right. This wasn’t some convention fly-by “how are you?” We actually had dinner together. Though he would certainly not remember it as I was but one of many dining companions that evening.

Back in 1994, Marvel Comics had just purchased Malibu Comics out from under a stunned DC Comics and a quick “executive back-slapping” dinner was organized at Chinois in Santa Monica.

Chinois is one of those places that you don’t really go to unless you’re on a really terrific date or someone else is picking up the tab. In this case, someone else was picking up the tab.

All the Marvel higher-ups of the day, like Terry Stewart, were there and so was the Malibu gang – Scott Rosenberg, Dave Olbrich, me and Chris Ulm. As we were ushered to our table, I found myself standing next to a very jovial Stan.

We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Stan leaned over to me and said in a conspiratorial whisper: “I always forget, who bought who? I need to know if I have to kiss your ass or you have to kiss mine!”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it! I could barely sputter out anything remotely intelligent so all I remember saying is: “I will always have to kiss yours, Mr. Lee.”
Someone quickly realized the error of seating Stan next to me and moved him to a place near the herd of good ol’ boy suit-wearers, but that was my 15 seconds of Stan-fame.

For years afterward, even after I left Malibu and started doing other things, I still got an annual Christmas card from Stan where he hand-wrote new word balloons for the characters on the front. They were my favorite cards ever.

And yes, I’ve told this story before.

For more on Stan, check out the new book, The Stan Lee Universe from Twomorrows.

[Artwork: The Stan Lee Universe by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas]